Computer technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace. Indeed, computers are used in almost all aspects of business, industry, and academic endeavors. Improvements in computer technologies have been a force for bringing about great increases in business and industrial productivity. More and more homes are using computers as well.
There are many different kinds of computers in use today. The term “computer system” will be used herein to refer generally to any device or combination of devices that is capable of processing information to produce a desired result. Some examples of computer systems include personal computers, hand-held computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), servers, mainframes, supercomputers, minicomputers, workstations, microcomputers, microcontrollers, and the like.
Computer networks have become increasingly important in today's society. Virtually every office environment uses a computer network to share resources, such as files, printers, or scanners. Unfortunately, managing the computer systems, or nodes, within these networks, particularly when the networks include hundreds or thousands of nodes, can be extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming. Further, successful management of these nodes often requires highly specialized knowledge and expertise. Software constantly needs to be updated, for example, to fend off the ever-changing array of viruses and spam (unwanted e-mail messages). In addition, it is often difficult to insure that all the software on a particular node is properly licensed, particularly when this task must be performed for hundreds of nodes. Further, computer users occasionally experience problems and difficulties with their computer systems. These problems need to be addressed rapidly to maintain high levels of productivity.
As a result of the burden and expense of managing a network group, software systems have been developed to enable remote management of the nodes. These software systems can perform numerous tasks, such as remote installation of software patches, creation of hardware and software inventories, and management of software licenses. Unfortunately, remote administration systems, which are used to implement these management systems, are frequently prevented from detecting all the nodes within a managed network group by a communication limiting device, such as a firewall.
The full benefits of a node management system thus cannot be achieved because system administrators simply may not be aware of unmanaged nodes. Furthermore, system administrators may be required to manually manage a node until identifying information for the node is transmitted to the remote node management system. Further, these unmanaged nodes may introduce viruses into a network system or can create other security vulnerabilities that place other nodes or the network at risk.
In view of the foregoing, benefits may be realized by improved systems and methods for distributed detection and management of nodes within a network group. Some exemplary systems and methods for distributed detection and management of nodes are described herein.